When your puppy is too young to have all his shots, how do you socialize with other dogs during that impressionable age? I know my relatives are going to want the puppy to visit their dogs and such, but their dogs frequent the dog park, and I don't want parvo coming in on their feetsies! They're the only dogs that we know right now in state. And strange dogs I won't even know the vaccine status of...

@lalachka, I'm not saying that I think socialization is only with other dogs. I'm saying it's a big part of it. My family had one who was reactive to non-GSDs because he hadn't met enough, and they looked weird and scary to him.

If its a clean dog park, its unlikely the dogs would pick up parvo and carry it on their feet back to their home. Exposure to vaccinated dogs is actually the best way to slowly introduce your pup to certain pathogens. Now...I don't know how prevalent parvo is in your area, but it's not that high of a risk in mine (that being said, my dog did have parvo as a puppy).

As long as the relatives haven't had a dog with parvo in the last 2 years in their yard, its probably fairly safe to go into their yard with your dog.

You should ALWAYS take the opportunity to socialize your dog around nice, safe, calm, well trained, adult dogs. Your puppy will pick up a lot from them, and if they're gentle with their corrections they will teach your puppy a lot about dog/dog interaction as well. If you know these dogs, trust these dogs, then I really don't see a reason not to let your puppy play with them.

As far as I understand, that comes from having bad experience with dogs. So for example, a dog was exposed to another dog and the other dog spooked your pup somehow.

I would tend to agree, except the reactionary tendencies were pretty exclusive to breeds that had strange faces (pits, pugs, etc) or that looked very dissimilar to what he'd been exposed to. Who knows? *shrug*

These dogs are very small, and not especially well trained. They're very sweet, trustworthy. Just not well trained. They kind of do what they want because they're little. I may be a little afraid of the bigger puppy hurting them... We had a Jack Russel several years ago, and our puppy at that time's favorite thing was to try and squish her with his huge foot. :/

I would tend to agree, except the reactionary tendencies were pretty exclusive to breeds that had strange faces (pits, pugs, etc) or that looked very dissimilar to what he'd been exposed to. Who knows? *shrug*

These dogs are very small, and not especially well trained. They're very sweet, trustworthy. Just not well trained. They kind of do what they want because they're little. I may be a little afraid of the bigger puppy hurting them... We had a Jack Russel several years ago, and our puppy at that time's favorite thing was to try and squish her with his huge foot. :/

Lol exactly. No one knows for sure. People will assume from their experiences and what they read.

This is actually a really good point though. A lot of the dogs that were raised by me and my family ended up being reactionary in general. I have NO idea why, they were around tons of dogs when they were little, never had bad experiences, and now that I think about it... Huh. How do I make it stop??---.... of course, that dog (who is my parent's now) basically never comes out of the box now because she's in the way. That can't help. Oiiii.

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